Thursday, April 28, 2005

Back to the Past

Sometimes people surprise thomasanton with feats of ingenuity, brilliance, or stupidity (we don't really care, we just like getting astounded). Sometimes, though, a story comes along that is so strange that we take a moment to make sure we hadn't accidentally licked any frogs. Take this for example. Apparently, some guy in Wisconsin kept his dead mother in a freezer for 5 years while he collected her social security checks.

Now, some people would label this guy as a couple of nuts short of a bolt, but we consider that the easy way out. The fact is that this guy isn't crazy - his genius is such it is 5 times greater than that of the average man... and 2 times greater than that of the thomasanton staff. Look at it like this: the guy in question did nothing except eat, sleep, converse in fluent Klingon with his internet homies, and work on his prototype lightsaber. I don't think he saw the true light of day for weeks. His friend described taking him grocery shopping and the guy buying 150 pounds of spam (mmm!) and three super-mega rolls of toilet paper.

This idyllic existence came to end when one of the neighbor's idiot children went tresspassing on Philip Schuth's property. Mr. Schuth naturally slapped the kid around a bit to teach the brat a lesson, which led to a disgruntled Mr. and Mrs. Annoying Kid coming over and chewing Schuth out. Schuth, however, already mad from Star Trek: Enterprise being cancelled, stepped out of his house, put his hand into his boots, drew out a .45 caliber pistol (!!!), and shot several times at the family. The family fled, and Schuth eventually surrendered peacefully to police after they surrounded his home, but not before exchanging fire with them too!In fact, the lightly armed Schuth held them off for 15 hours, saying he had bombs in the basement and a cache of firearms, according to court documents.

Like I said, it's not often we hear about something as disturbing as this. But we must remember the emotional scarring that must have lead up to this point for Schuth; by all accounts his mother was responsible for a great deal of it. It's just comforting to know that, at the end of the day, mother and son could get back together for chill-out time.